The MassKara Festival is a week-long festival held each year in Bacolod City, capital of Negros Occidental province, every third weekend of October nearest October 19, the city’s founding anniversary.

The festival was born out of crisis in 1980 when the price of sugar cane, a primary crop in the province, plunged due cheap sugar substitutes in the US. In the same year on April 22 tragedy struck when the inter-island ferry boat Don Juan carrying many Negrenses, including those belonging to prominent families in Bacolod, collided with the tanker Tacloban City and sank, killing an estimated 700 people.

In the midst of these tragic events, the city’s artists, local government and civic groups decided to hold a festival of smiles, because the city at that time was also known as the City of Smiles. The word “MassKara” was coined by the late artist Ely Santiago from the word “mass” meaning “many or a multitude of the people”, and the Spanish word cara meaning “face”. A prominent feature of the festival is the mask worn by participants; these are always adorned with smiling faces. MassKara thus means a multitude of smiling face’.

The festival features a street dance competition where people from all walks of life troop to the streets to see masked dancers gyrating to the rhythm of Latin musical beats in a display of gaiety, coordination and stamina. (From: Wikipedia).